Tories to remove opposition funding

What more evil way to block any opposition than to remove all funding for any opposition parties? That’s exactly what the Tories are planning with their 2 part scheme to kill Labour funding. The first part of the plan was to cut Short Money – which is funding provided to opposition parties to help them operate in opposition. That will remove £1m a year from Labour funding. The second part of the plan is to stop unions from funding the Labour party. They will instead force union members to individually fund the party, a move likely to cost the Labour party about £5m a year. And to get this through, the Tories are going to use secondary legislation again – a new favourite trick of theirs to pass laws without scrutiny. Mwhahaha.

Unfortunately, the Lib Dems are attempting to stop this undermining of democracy. They are doing that by the sneaky underhand method of proposing that all donations be subject to caps – not just Labour ones. That would mean that the Tories, who rely on massive donations from a small number of influential donors, would also be subject to similar funding cuts to Labour. Lets hope democracy doesn’t prevail this time, or we may not be able to turn in to a dictatorship as quickly as the Tories would like.